The black swan : the impact of the highly improbable
Talks about the random events that underlie our lives (Black Swans), from bestsellers to world disasters. Notes that while the impact of #x93;Black Swans#x94; is huge, and they are nearly impossible to predict, we always try to rationalise them when they occur. Shows how to stop trying to predict everything and take advantage of uncertainty
xxviii, 366 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm
9781400063512, 1400063515
1018428757
UMBERTO ECO'S ANTILIBRARY, OR HOW WE SEEK VALIDATION: The apprenticeship of an empirical skeptic ; Yevgenia's black swan ; The speculator and the prostitute ; One thousand and one days, or how not to be a sucker ; Confirmation shmonfirmation! ; The narrative fallacy ; Living in the antechamber of hope ; Giacomo Casanova's unfailing luck: the problem of silent evidence ; The Ludic fallacy, or the uncertainty of the nerd ; WE JUST CAN'T PREDICT: The scandal of prediction ; How to look for bird poop ; Epistemocracy, a dream ; Appelles the painter, or what you do if you cannot predict? ; THOSE GRAY SWANS OF EXTREMISTAN: From Mediocristan to Extremistan, and back ; The Bell curve, that great intellectual fraud ; The aesthetics of randomness ; Locke's madmen, or Bell curves in the wrong places ; The uncertainty of the phony ; Half and half, or how to get even with the black swan ; Epilogue: Yevgenia's white swans